Google Analytics & AdWords: 301s not passing gclid

A good webmaster will implement 301 or 302 redirects to legacy URLs but it often results in paid search traffic being mis-categorised. Whilst your destination URLs will still end up at the expected page, it often be tagged as organic traffic.

Specifically, when you link AdWords and Analytics, Google will append a gclid to destination URLs which Google uses to match keywords, campaigns and other dimensions to give you richer data in GA.

However, most webmasters won’t implement the right directives to pass on the query string, so the user clicks on the redirected URL, the following happens and the gclid is lost in the redirection.

Are my redirects AdWords friendly?

There’s a very simple way to check if your redirect is AdWords and Analytics friendly, simply try going to the old destination URL and append “?gclid=testing” on the end. If it redirects to the new URL and keeps it on the end, you don’t need to be on the phone with your webmaster!

Fixing with Apache & .htaccess

If the above tip didn’t pass on the gclid for you, the good news is there’s an easy way to fix this in Apache:

Tip: Use my free Batch HTTP header checker to verify up to 500 destination URLs before making your SEM campaign live.